Want to capture video from your phone or console? You could just point a camera at the screen, but a more sensible way to do it is to capture the video directly via USB-C. The good folks at Benfei have sent me another gadget to review! This is a USB-C Video/Audio capture dongle. Plug one end into a device and the other into your computer - it will show up as a USB video capture device. Notice …
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While visiting Goethe Haus in Frankfurt, I read a summary of the 1822 book "Meister Floh" and thought it might be fun to read. It is curious. Half the satire has long since lost all relevance to the world, yet it is still an entertaining and mysterious novel. Much like 1827's "The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century" things just happen. People wander into rooms, announce their…
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I find misery-memoirs like this difficult to read and disturbing to think about. Much like the tragic story of Mini and Me, reading this book made me feel like I was trapped in one of those nightmares where you try to scream a warning but no sound comes out. Fern has been refreshingly honest about autism and how it affects women in particular. I can't think when I last read an autobiography…
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This is a gloriously nerdy book. Shuichiro Yamanouchi - considered to be one of the founding forces behind Japan's "Bullet Train" system - takes us behind the scenes of its development. It's a mixture of autobiography and corporate retrospective, with a healthy dose of engineering geekery. Although originally published in 1999 there are fairly comprehensive footnotes updating the reader on…
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The good folks at Benfei have sent me another gadget to play about with. This one comes in two parts. The first plugs into an screen's HDMI port, the second beams video from your device's USB-C port across the airwaves. Here's what it looks like: But how does it perform? Plug the HDMI into your TV and its USB-A end into a suitable power source (my TV had one nearby). After a few seconds,…
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Well this is a treat! It is rare to find a pop-science book which does such a good job of actually explaining the science, rather than just using it as a background for storytelling. The Battle of Beams doesn't go too deep into the mechanics and physics, but gives a general overview with just enough detail to keep things interesting. It is also well illustrated (not a given in these sorts of…
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Many years ago, in another lifetime, I was presenting our team's work to a rather senior politician. Here's how I remember it: "We want to provide value for money," I said, "so we propose that running five small pilots of [thing I still can't talk about]. We know there are multiple technologies which could work. But we don't know which one will work best." "How will running something five times …
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This is a stunning book. If some scientists and mathematicians have seen further than others, it is by standing on the mountains of madness. This straddles between being a faithful and fanciful biography of insanity. It is written like a hyperactive friend trying to show you how all the things in the universe connect with each other - while you slowly back away in terror. Are these ghost…
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The "…by Candlelight" concerts have a simple premise - come to a cathedral or church to hear top West End talent sing your favourite singer's songs, backed by a live band. This is a cut above your usual tribute act - they aren't trying to do impressions of the act, they're stamping their own energy onto beloved songs. It works! Mostly. This concert was in a West End theatre so the (electric) c…
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In theory, you should be able to get the base favicon of any domain by calling /favicon.ico - but the reality is somewhat more complex than that. Plenty of sites use a wide variety of semi-standardised images which are usually only discoverable from the site's HTML. There are several services which allow you to get favicons based on a domain. But they all have their problems. Google Exposes…
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Our friends Annie and Dave run the podcast "Will You Still Love It Tomorrow". The premise is great - take a film that you love but you haven't seen for ages, and see if it still holds up. They asked me and Liz to nominate a film to discuss with them. What's something that we loved but last saw 20ish years ago? We suggested The Story of the Weeping Camel. It is my go-to answer when someone asks …
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I've gotten sufficiently annoyed with a trivial problem that I'm preparing to write an IETF RFC. Yeah. That's how ticked off I am! Every site that I sign up for asks me to upload an avatar to represent myself. Whenever I change my photo, I have to log in to a hundred sites and change it there. Perhaps they could all use Gravatar - but that's a centralised service and doesn't work with wildcard…
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